The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a nonpartisan American public policy think tank and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe.

Founded in 1972 through a gift from the West German government on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, GMF contributes research and analysis on transatlantic and global issues; convenes policy and business leaders at major international conferences; provides exchange opportunities for emerging American and European leaders; and supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies.

The president of GMF is Karen Donfried, who joined in April 2014. Past presidents of GMF include Benjamin H. Read (1973–77), Robert Gerald Livingston (1977–81), Frank E. Loy (1981–95), and Craig Kennedy (1996-2014).

GMF was founded as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance through a grant from the West German government. Its founder was Guido Goldman, who was the director of Harvard''s West European Studies program in the early 1970s. Goldman, an American whose family had fled Germany in 1940, lobbied the West German government, particularly Finance Minister Alex Möller, for an endowment to promote European and U.S. relations on the 25th anniversary of Marshall Plan aid. Working with a planning group that was to constitute the Fund''s initial Board of Trustees - including physicist Harvey Brooks, diplomat Robert Ellsworth, journalist Max Frankel, economist Richard N. Cooper, and educator Howard Swearer - Goldman eventually received an agreement to support an independent institution in 1971.

German Chancellor Willy Brandt, announced the creation of GMF in a speech on June 5, 1972 at Harvard, saying that it would help increase U.S.-European cooperation and mutual understanding. Brandt wrote four years later:

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My government wanted to mark the 25th anniversary of the launching of the Marshall Plan with something more than just a friendly word of remembrance…. I myself announced that the federal government had, with parliamentary approval, resolved to make resources available for a Marshall Memorial Fund. The sum was to provide backing for American-European studies and research projects.

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Other charter members of the Board of Trustees included economist Carl Kaysen, judge Arlin M. Adams, and businessman Donald M. Kendall. The first president, selected in 1973, was Benjamin H. Read, who was later to become U.S. Under Secretary of State for Management.

The Early Days (1972-1989)

In the 1970s and 1980s, GMF dispersed grants in accordance with its mission, including to academic researchers and to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It also provided the initial funding for the Institute for International Economics, now the Peterson Institute for International Economics. By 1977, the organization had spent more than $7 million on nearly 100 projects involving the United States, West Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and Canada. Academic Michael Naumann has said that GMF was one of the first think tanks to focus on the importance of soft power at a time when most academic focus was on military issues.

In addition to grants, GMF also began a U.S.-Europe parliamentary exchange program and the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, which has since funded the exchange of over 2000 young leaders across the Atlantic. 1977 was also the first year GMF organized a parliamentary exchange between the United States and Europe, with 12 young European parliamentarians visiting the U.S. Congress in Washington.

In 1980, GMF opened its first European office in Bonn. In 1985, the West German government agreed to renew its grant to GMF, a decision that Chancellor Helmut Kohl informed Ronald Reagan about in a letter on December 5, 1985. In 1987, George Kennan gave the keynote address at a conference organized in West Berlin by GMF to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. Also in the 1980s, GMF supported programs such as a National Governors Association initiative to tackle acid rain, and began to work actively with the democracy movements of Central and Eastern Europe through the dispersal of small grants.

GMF Expansion (1989-present)

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, GMF was among the first U.S. organizations to establish a presence in what had been East Berlin, in 1990. It moved its Bonn operations to Berlin in 1992. In 2006, GMF acquired its current headquarters in Washington, DC, a building that until 1963 had housed the West German chancery, and that had hosted such figures as John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, Lyndon B. Johnson, and George C. Marshall. German Chancellor Angela Merkel dedicated the new building.

GMF rapidly expanded its work in Central and Eastern Europe and played an instrumental role during the 1990s in assisting with the transitions to democracy in this region. In the 2000s, GMF established an office in Bratislava for activities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkan Trust for Democracy in Belgrade, the Black Sea Trust in Bucharest, and an office in Warsaw. In 2001, GMF established a center in Brussels and an office in Paris.

GMF also began to expand its public policy activities. In 2002, GMF conducted its first survey, along with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The next year, it was renamed Transatlantic Trends, and became an annual indicator of public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. GMF established its Transatlantic Fellows program to enable permanent resident expertise on global public policy issues. It also founded the Transatlantic Academy for visiting scholars, and initiated the Transatlantic Take commentary series. GMF’s exchange programs also expanded with the addition of American Marshall Memorial Fellows, the initiation of the Manfred Worner seminar for defense specialists, and the establishment of the Congress-Bundestag Forum.

By the mid-2000s, GMF established itself as a major convener on transatlantic issues. In 2004, GMF organized a major conference in Istanbul in the run up to the NATO Summit, which led to the opening of an office in Ankara. In 2005, GMF hosted President George W. Bush in Brussels, where he delivered the first foreign speech of his second term. The next year, 2006, saw the first Brussels Forum, now its flagship annual event. GMF''s convening continued to grow every year and began sponsoring expert dialogues on Turkey, China, India, and the Mediterranean, as well as events alongside international climate change summits in Copenhagen and Cancun. In 2012, GMF added a second annual event, The Atlantic Dialogues, in Morocco. Speakers at GMF events have included Robert Gates, Madeleine Albright, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Catherine Ashton, Condoleezza Rice, Wolfgang Schauble, Gordon Brown, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, among many other European and U.S. heads of state and government, cabinet ministers, and legislators.

Current Programs and Initiatives Brussels Forum

Brussels Forum is an annual high-level meeting of influential U.S., European, and global political, corporate, and intellectual leaders in Brussels. Participants include heads of state and government, senior officials from the European Union institutions and the member states, U.S. Cabinet officials, Congressional representatives, parliamentarians, academics, and media.

Atlantic Dialogues

The Atlantic Dialogues is an annual event in Morocco that brings together around 300 high-level public- and private-sector leaders from around the Atlantic Basin - including Africa and Latin America - for discussion on cross-regional issues ranging from security to economics, migration to energy.

Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD)

The Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD) is a $36-million grantmaking initiative that supports democracy, good governance, and Euroatlantic integration in Southeastern Europe. The award-winning public-private partnership was created in 2003 by GMF, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Operating out of GMF''s Belgrade office, BTD has awarded grants in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia.

Transatlantic Academy (TA)

The Transatlantic Academy serves as a forum for a select group of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic and from different academic and policy disciplines to examine a single set of issues over a single academic year. Visiting fellows come from the fields of public policy, business administration, economics, journalism, and NGOs/civil society.

Transatlantic Trends (TT)

Since 2003, Transatlantic Trends has measured broad public opinion through surveys in the United States, Turkey, and several European Union countries. Participants are polled on global threats, foreign policy objectives, world leadership, and multilateral institutions.